Column by Alex R. Knight III.
Exclusive to STR
While there are many books both in and out of print designed to proselytize for a voluntary society to a layman audience, none perhaps have done so while retaining the kind of populist feel present in this offering from author Gregory Sams.
Initially published in 1998 in a slightly less expansive form, earlier this year saw the latest edition of The...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }Sometimes I have to laugh at all the arm-waving that libertarian theorists display. The inclination to argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin must be irresistible. I’m referring in particular to Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s latest 9,600-word broadside, A Realistic Libertarianism.
1) It is amusing to see...

Column by Paul Hein.
Exclusive to STR
I am bemused at the concern shown about the problem of illegal aliens, but perhaps that can be attributed to the fact that I live hundreds of miles from the border. There seems to be some controversy about the role of the federal vs. state governments. I think this would be an ideal situation to employ the principle of subsidiarity, which states that problems...

Column by Paul Hein.
Exclusive to STR
Hillary is being coy about declaring her ambition to be president, and the first female Ruler of the World. While she dithers about the announcement, let me make mine: Once again I declare my candidacy for the presidency. You may recall that the last time I garnered 15 votes; this time I hope to get at least twice as many.
The usual question is raised...

Column by Paul Hein.
Exclusive to STR
I’ll wager you don’t drive a Tesla, or know anyone who does. But you’ve probably heard of it--a pricey deluxe sedan powered by electricity, with a range of over 200 miles between charges. Tesla management wants to sell its cars direct to consumers, rather than to dealers who will then re-sell it to buyers, after adding their costs, plus...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
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Like the latter adjective in its title, Free Is Beautiful, this book—insofar as it is a clear and well-argued introduction not only to libertarian theory itself but also to the close correspondence of libertarianism with true Catholic teaching—is also beautiful. Consequently, Randy England was able to harmonize libertarianism with...

Column by Paul Hein.
Exclusive to STR
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }About three decades ago, I was visiting a friend at the penitentiary in Jefferson City, where he was about at the end of his sentence for the ghastly “crime” of buying cigarettes cheap in a neighboring state, and selling them to his clients in Missouri. It was the practice at the time to allow soon-to-be-released...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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There are many, including myself who, having examined how and by whom and for what purpose the Constitution was used to overthrow the clearly superior Articles of Confederation, tend to throw up our hands at any notion of restoring it. Why bother? Our current police state can be traced directly way back to the 1787 Convention, it seems. However, it might...

Column by Alex R. Knight III.
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While he has long since come out candidly as a free market anarchist, Lew Rockwell, through his ever-popular LRC site, has provided a forum for freedom-oriented thinkers ranging from Voluntaryist to minarchist. Indeed, among Rockwell’s other accomplishments and titles are serving as editorial assistant to small government Austrian-economist...

Column by Paul Hein.
Exclusive to STR
“I’ve got a tremendous idea,” you announce to your colleagues. “Wouldn’t it be great if everyone had health insurance?”
“You bet,” they agree--at least most of them.
“Well, let’s make everybody buy it. If some can’t afford it, we’ll subsidize it, somehow, and if they refuse, we’ll...

Column by Jim Davies.
Exclusive to STR
For ten thousand years, governments have polluted the human race by stealing and squandering the products of our labor, repeatedly creating war and destruction, and choking off initiative and invention. Yet now, in this present era, there is serious hope that these parasites will cease to leech. The root of the problem is, at long last, being...

Column by new Root Striker antiox.
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Who knew that Janet Napolitano was a fashionista? What other conclusion can we come to after finding out that in addition to the war on Islamic fascism, her department is now waging another in favor of idiotic faddism? That’s right, the Department of Homeland Security has taken to setting up surreptitiously in local flea markets and...

Column by new Root Striker William Hubbard.
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I have sullied myself this day, and for no profitable reason. I have stained my soul and made a lopsided deal with the devil. I entered the voting booth this afternoon, for the last time, against my principle, in order that I may fight for other principles. I have not voted in years. This is not out of apathy but out of...

Column by Jim Davies.
Exclusive to STR
[Author's Note: Readers who know someone who helps operate elections might usefully refer him or her to this article. Should it become widely read before November, it could have an interesting effect. It's adapted from one of a series at the new web site TinyURL.com/QuitGov, which aims to help government employees lead honest lives....

Column by Paul Hein.
Exclusive to STR
Decades ago, seated at my desk, writing checks, the thought came, unbidden and unexpected, into my mind: Where are all the armored cars?
I was, at that moment, probably only one of thousands—perhaps hundreds of thousands—of individuals writing checks. By means of those written instruments, money was being transferred from one bank to...

Column by Glen Allport.
Part 4 of "Could the Non-Aggression Principle Stop the Sixth Great Extinction?"
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My previous column – Timeline of a World-Killing Paradigm Shift – describes our current situation, including the dead-serious threat that the Fukushima disaster poses to the entire planet, and how we got here. In this column, I will describe...

Column by Jim Davies.
Exclusive to STR
"Capitalism" is another of those words, like "liberal," whose meanings have been twisted by time, use and particularly by government influence, to mean something quite different from, and sometimes opposite to, their original intent. When we see Occupy Wall Street protesters waving banners calling for its downfall, they are referring to...

Column by Scott Lazarowitz.
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Economist Robert Wenzel recently gave Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson a tough interview. Wenzel pushed hard for honest answers on behalf of mainly his “hardcore libertarian” readers and listeners. By “hardcore,” he refers to those with a bias toward Austrian School economic thought, Rothbardian ethics and an...

Column by Jim Davies.
Exclusive to STR
Few novels if any can have so profoundly assisted the spread of socialism in the century following 1850 as those of Charles Dickens, for they portrayed vividly the slums in English cities during the Industrial Revolution which enabled Karl Marx, who lived in London with support from his friend Friedrich Engels, to denounce the capitalist system he said had...

Column by Jim Davies.
Government tries to justify its ubiquitous spying on private correspondence on the back of 9/11. It's just another government lie. The events below took place four years earlier.
Back in 1997, Mr Gingrich was a powerful figure in DC – Speaker of the House. Soon afterwards he swapped wives and was cast into outer darkness for a decade, but recently he ran...

Column by D. Saul Weiner.
Exclusive to STR
There are a lot of heated exchanges going on right now in social media related to vaccination. Many people have become convinced that parents who do not vaccinate are jeopardizing the health of others and that vaccines for children should be mandated. Politicians who are expected to run for president in 2016 are starting to weigh in on the topic and some...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
Introduction for this 2013 Edition
As I write this – October 28, 2013, more than four years after the column below was posted (here with minor edits; see the original at this link if you wish) – NBC News is reporting that the Obama administration “knew millions could not keep their health insurance" under Obamacare, and has known...

Column by Alex R. Knight III.
Exclusive to STR
Perhaps never before have I encountered a proposal within Liberty Movement circles that has generated more controversy faster and further than Adam Kokesh’s planned July 4th march on Washington, District of Criminals, in which he states that himself and the other participants “will march with rifles loaded & slung across our backs to...

Column by Faisal Moghul.
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Almost 30 years ago, cultural critic Neil Postman argued in Amusing Ourselves to Death that television’s gradual replacement of the printing press has created a dumbed-down culture driven by mindless entertainment. In this context, Postman claimed that Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World correctly foresaw our dystopian future, as opposed to George...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
Perhaps I should say this paradigm shift is resuming. The healthier incoming paradigm is a modern, more accurate, better-supported, and better-understood version of one that began the shift towards a free, healthy, and prosperous world more than three centuries ago and which informed the creation of the United States itself: Classical Liberalism.
- 1...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
Part 3 of "Could the Non-Aggression Principle Stop the Sixth Great Extinction?"
Part One of this series discussed the Non-Aggression principle, calling it "the libertarian half of the Golden Rule" (compassion being the other half) and describing the function of aggression in creating not only tyranny and war but also...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
Question: are you more terrified by Muslim extremists, by "domestic terrorists" – or by your own government? Which group is more likely to assault you? To kill you? To unjustly imprison and even torture you?
The U.S. federal government has ALREADY:
Built and is staffing a huge gulag of concentration camps [...

Column by JGVibes.
Exclusive to STR
Although the common perception of human nature is very negative, the truth is that most people who aren’t mentally ill have a very difficult time committing acts of violence. Usually it takes a sizeable payment and a fair amount of manipulation to convince someone to act violently, and even then a tremendous amount of guilt typically...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
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Plundering Wealth vs Producing Wealth
In recent decades, the rich have gathered an increasing share of the total wealth in the United States. As this wealth disparity grows and especially as large numbers of the formerly middle class fall into poverty and even into homelessness, this flow of wealth from main street (from anyone not...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
This is Part 2 of a response to a column by Wesley Messamore. Last week's Part One of this column discussed the following:
· Minarchy: Lighting a Match to the Fuse of Tyranny
· Anarchy: By Itself, Yang without Yin
· The Missing Key...

Column by L.K. Samuels.
Exclusive to STR
Chaos gets a bad rap—from the academic and scientific world, even from some uninformed libertarians. Few people realize that without the dynamics of chaos, order would not exist. In fact, nothing would exist. Without chaos there would be no creation, no structure and no existence. After all, order is merely the repetition of patterns; chaos is the...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
Exclusive to STR
I was reading an article about Roger Williams. The more I learn about him, the more impressed I become.
﻿"Roger Williams was not a man out of time. He belonged to the 17th Century and to Puritans in that century. Yet he was also one of the most remarkable men of his or any century. With absolute faith in the literal truth of the Bible and in his...

Column by Jim Davies.
Exclusive to STR
I've been continuing to read the fascinating story of the modern libertarian movement's early years, as told in the Libertarian Forum, edited and often written by Murray Rothbard. It's vast, but very worthwhile – warmly recommended. I've supplemented it recently with a re-read of parts of Justin Raimondo's excellent biography of him...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
Whoever cannot hit the nail on the head should please, not hit it at all. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Image of The Ring of Power from Wikimedia Commons
– 1 –
If I had the Ring of Power, I would only use it for GOOD!
Recently, I was reminded that to at least some extent, left-leaning libertarians and anarchists do not understand that...

Column by Alex R. Knight III.
Exclusive to STR
During my years as a practicing alcoholic, I employed any number of tactics to avoid the ultimately invariable conclusion that in order to solve my numerous problems, I needed to stop drinking altogether.
Even long after I had made the inner admission that I was, in all likelihood, suffering from the disease – and I knew or understood very...

The article below contains excerpts from L.K. Samuels’ new book, In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action.
Column by L.K. Samuels.
Exclusive to STR
Good intentions rarely make good laws. Those who do evil almost always think they are doing good for goodness’ sake. Nobody sees himself as evil. As Will Smith, the American actor, once quipped, “...

Column by Jim Davies.
Exclusive to STR
Prior to Harry Browne's first run for US President in 1996, his friend John Pugsley wrote him a passionate “open letter” urging him not to. As far as I know, Harry didn't reply, but he did continue his campaign – and repeated it four years later. He got few votes more than the LP normally receives, but his platform and campaign were...

Column by Greg Haley.
Exclusive to STR
Ed Schultz has set quite the task out for himself. On his New Year’s Eve broadcast on MSNBC, he announced who his “Middle Class Heroes of 2012” are.
Schultz is a self-styled liberal, so his recipients of the title “Middle Class Hero” are predictable and worthy of a certain amount of eye rolling. The general reverence for...

Column by tzo.
Exclusive to STR
To anyone who has seen or read The Reader (a synopsis of the relevant part of the story is here), one of the main questions raised in the story is, "What should be done with Hanna?"
Was she responsible for her actions even if she was so thoroughly indoctrinated so as to be completely confused by the charges against her? She asked more than once, while...

Column by Jim Davies.
Exclusive to STR
Recently I re-read part of that seminal essay, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude by Etienne de la Boëtie, written in 1548, or 464 years ago. He said that if you want to topple a tyrant, all you need to do is to withdraw support. No violence, no sweat, just stop helping him.
Yet 24 years later there was a massacre of Huguenot Protestants, indicating that...